Saturday 1 March 2008

Installing V8.0.1 Lotus Client on a PIII-600-EB with 512Mb on XP pro SP2

All,
It was a blowly mizzly pishy rotten day today with no rugby (that i wanted to watch) so I amused myself by digging out an old Intel PIII box. The box in question is of known origin (ie i assembled it) There are some dark recesses where geriatric kit is still used and I wanted to see would it work.

Spec: PIII 600Mhz EB (133MHz bus and 256K L2 on die) running on an Asus CUSL2 815e motherboard, in standard fettle (no over clocking) with 512Mb memory (2x128 and 1x256MB) 40Gb IDE HD.

I popped a clean copy of XP Pro SP2 onto it and the proceed to do a clean install of
the Basic V801 client which although it took an AGE to uncompress (11Mins!) installed without a hitch or complaint in 7mins

After the initial fiddling around to get the client configured, starting and stopping was not startling... 98s from launch to password and then another 15s to the client totally open. Opening a mail file (inbox loaded with around 100 mails, all docs around 1000) was predictably sluggish around 90s, but once open performance was adequate without breaking any records.

Having done all that I copied out the mail file ... un-installed the basic client and did an install of the full client, (ie everything that was possible was installed)
This took 35mins to unpack !!! and the install itself was 16mins. I configed the client,I copied my test mail file back in, pointed the client at it, configed up the sametime to talk to BleedYellow and then opened the client expecting it to load in a time that would allow me to make and drink 2 cups of coffee, vacuum the house and wash the car. I was pleasantly surprised when it opened in 2mins 45s, working with it was a bit more of a chore, things like opening and sending mail took 3-5 seconds longer that the basic client (on a decent box these were instantaneous) and when typing there was occasionally a lag where nothing happened and then suddenly you got 4 or 5 words all in a rush. There was considerable disk IO to begin with so I left it for 30 mins (to do the the vacuuming before divorce was mentioned) and when I returned the disk IO had dropped back to normal background behavior and subsequent stop and starts of the client had between 10 and 15 mins of rabid disk activity that settled down and allow almost-normal working.

The productivity pack worked well once it had started ... IBM could have been more creative with their splash screen, a few jokes, a risque picture or two .. would have been nice as would perhaps some background music :) Again it suffered from a period of intense disk activity which settled down and normal service resumed.

A word of warning DO NOT USE ITUNES while running Notes on an old machine I did and both just die! However iSeries Client Access, TN5250 telent, splurd and even an monster exHell spreadsheet worked within acceptable levels .... just ... with the v8.0.1 client running in the background.

One thing that was rather annoying was the "you have new mail" which when it popped up froze everything for perhaps 10s. No amount of clicking would make the ***** thing go away and then poof everything was back to normal.

All the extra bells and whistles worked as expected... Threads in your inbox took a heartbeat longer to expand and contract.

Does anyone know if the productivity tools run in the same thread pool as the client if active, cos if you have the notes client active or the productivity tools active when you start the other, the start time noticeably improves, so you really only take and excessive "yawn" period where you can memorize the licensing blurp on the splash screen when you start either for the first time.

While I would not recommend you rolling out v801 onto an entire organization that uses old kit, if you do have the odd poor benighted soul in some dark corner that needs the client and all the whizzbangery, I think there is no overpowering reason not to install it. Yes it will be slow, yes it does make your HD sound like a F1 at full revs for a while, but it is workable.

Slaun

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of when R5 just came out and an IBM business partner who was on a sales call at our site commented after our meeting: "R5 is a memory hog...if you don't have *256 MB* of RAM you can forget it."
Its funny how we freak out over how much hardware a new version requires, but eventually the hardware catches up and we forget about it. The same things were said when NT, Windows 2000, and XP were first released.

Unknown said...

@Roland

Aye indeed "the gap" as it is affectionately known. Sadly there are those forgotten folk in most companies that are beavering away on 10 year old boxes. Usually because they insulted the tech-support managers wife at the 1998 xmas party.
;-)

Anonymous said...

nodody think about normal-users (Office-Users...). If you ask the people in offices, they tell : Lotus-Notes = Turtle.
Widgets are only games for developer and the people who have too many free time ....

Unknown said...

@anonymous

Well yes, if you are talking about pacman, weather and facebook widgets. However the frist 3 widgets I made designed go and get data from our backend databases (DB2 on an iSeries) and present the user with useful information like stock,bookings, forecasts all on a right-click from inside an email, or the crm system or a team room.

I would like to think that this has some value and use beyond gaming having too much free time.

My normal office users the ones that use splurd and exhell have never refered to notes using any form of aquatic reptilian metaphor and contrary to your belief my developemnt and admin team think of them all the time.

Steve

Anonymous said...

a groupware-product with a better groupcalendar ist more important than
pacman for developer and admins.

Unknown said...

@Anonymous

What on earth has got up your arse about widgets? I have already said that the first widgets we have deployed are business related and give business value to the users.

You sir, or madam are a troll!

Your inane and ill-informed cowardly anonymous comments show you to be Redmond-fixated Troll in possession of an intellect that would be barely capable of assembling a car number plate let alone being able to contribute a reasoned argument in favour of your position.

May I suggest a larger stone, as the one you crawled out from under is of insufficient weight to keep you out of sight and earshot of the rest of world

Unknown said...

To any reader who chances across these comments please be aware I would I have liked to spare you my above response by taking it off-line but I was forced by the anonymity of the poster into a public rebuke.

Please feel free to yell "notes sucks" at me at any time as no software is without fault or blemish But PLEASE have the common courtesy of leaving your name and at least something to back up any complaint or justification for your position.

Steve

Anonymous said...

i am a notes user since 1990 and i develop the notes-aplication for normal-users. that is under the belt line, you can no criticism bear.
grumbles is no answer.

i speak for many notes-users, who use it to work and are not blind and fanatic.

Unknown said...

@anonymous

You speak for no one - (not even yourself as long as you hide behind a mask of anonymity) and even if you did your comments are generic ill thought whining.

"a groupware-product with a better groupcalendar ist more important than
pacman for developer and admins


Get a grip on reality! Are you seriously suggesting that the notes calendar is in some way flawed? I challenge you to define in what way it is and to suggest how it can be improved. If you are going to whine like a 5 year old at least back it up.

Pacman ??. you are not seriously suggesting that I and 1000's of other admins and dev's are going to be developing pacman widgets for our users? and you wonder why i react to your critism with vigour?

If you do not have the capacity to see the business value widgets, Composite applications and the other improvements in V8 can and will bring to your users, then you are complete idiot.

I will answer and may even agree with you if you can provide even a hint at what you seem to think are self evident problems.
Grumbles is no answer
WTF You haven't asked any questions so how the f**k could I be grumbling an answer?

Anonymous said...

it's under my level!!!!

Anonymous said...

Come on Steve, play the game! You're under his / her level! Tsk!

The internet is great isn't it?

Unknown said...

@Ben

LOL .. aye s'true so it is. I am a mere bagatelle. But i can swear better than him, for longer,more colourfully and probably in more languages than him ... so I now feel superior at least in that respect. :)

He caught me in a bad week. I am not normally that...errr... short with strangers.

Steve

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